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Listicles: America is awful so you should move to country X

Posted on August 18, 2025September 9, 2025

A daily staple of America’s doomerism media is that America is awful and your life would be so much better if you moved to country X!

Here is a link to one of these AI generated content mill stories: 11 Destinations Expats Prefer Over the U.S. for a Better Quality of Life

It starts out by listing Australia, one of the more difficult countries to move to due to immigration restrictions. It also lists Sweden, and Switzerland (extremely hard to immigrate to). This is a fiction news story that misleads the American public in to thinking they can easily move abroad – but they cannot.

About 20,000 to 30,000 Americans live in Switzerland and that figure has been constant for a longtime.

About 24,000 US born Americans have residency in Sweden (perhaps another 15,000 have dual citizenship or dual residency in the US and Sweden). Marriage and “family re-unification” accounts for probably 25% of those who obtained residency, says AI.

As you can see, very, very few Americans move to many of these countries.

Doomerism content mills like to generate “listicles” – stories with a number in the headline and then an enumerated list of items. They are easy to produce, are often false, like the above, but they generate clicks to sell eyeballs to advertisers.

As documented on this blog, at any given time an estimated 2-3% 1-2% of Americans are living abroad, and about 1%+/- of Americans will retire abroad.

Of the 2-3% 1-2%, about one third obtained residency via marriage (90% of whom are educated, attractive, young American women), about one third have prior dual citizenship or right of descent ancestry, and one third are “other” which includes studying abroad, stationed abroad in the military, or working abroad, or retire abroad.

Of the tiny sliver that retire abroad, about half already had close connections to the destination country – they had prior dual citizenship and retired to their home country where they have family, or they are American citizens with residency permits due to having worked there for years, and chose to retire where they have lived for a long time and already own their home. Close to zero percent of Americans retire abroad.

The myth that Americans can pack up and move to another country for a better life is a myth maintained by the doomer media.

Series

  • How Global Are We? More than you thought
  • The Myth that Americans can Easily Move Abroad (most cannot)
  • Who Gets to Move Abroad? (Prior dual citizens, those with right of descent ancestry, and those who marry a foreigner)
  • 80% of “I moved abroad” stories are to Europe, but only 20% of Americans abroad live there - media stories are biased
  • Why Europe Dominates “I Moved Abroad” Stories
  • But 40% of Americans might have "immigration privilege" (Kind of) -because recent ancestors were born abroad
  • Leaders with International Experience
  • Up to 40% of the U.S. population may have lived abroad at some point

Recent Posts

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  • Norwegian woman with valid visa, married to American detained at Green Card interview
  • One more reality check on Americans moving abroad
  • The estimate of the number of Americans abroad has been cut in half
  • More media myth: Everyone is moving to Europe

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